Welcome back to our weekly survey of what's goin' down in the several states, where, as we know, the real work of governmentin' gets done and the pumps don't work 'cause the vandals took the handles.

We haven't stopped in Arizona for a while, so let's start there, where we discover that the local legislature apparently has decided, "Oh, screw it. Hiding-out bigotry is just too exhausting. Let's just stop pretending and get a beer, okay?"

Arizona's Maricopa county listed the wrong date in the Spanish version of voter registration cards, a development likely to further complicate tense relations between local authorities and Latino residents. The county's elections office says it mailed out nearly 2 million new voter registration cards. Only about 50 of the cards — handed out over-the-counter at its offices — had the error, it said. Instead of November 6, the Spanish translation said the election would take place on November 8.

"Likely to further complicate tense relations between local authorities and Latino residents"? In Joe Arpaio's county? Unpossible!

Arpaio rejected the Department of Justice's call for monitors to oversee the workings of his department. "That shows you they want to take over this office," he said. "Under this agreement with the so-called monitor, I'd probably have to clear every press release before I go public, especially having to do with illegal immigration, with the Department of Justice."

Hard to believe that an accident like that with the ballots could happen in a place like this.

Luckily, there was a big lizard leaving, heading east, and it brought us to South Carolina, historic home office of armed American sedition, where a local Republican star eschewed hard drugs and found other outlets for youthful experimentation.

Davis : "Were you a member?"

Moore : "I was"

Davis : "Did you participate in any sort of ceremonies?"

Moore : "No, I don't remember a ceremony, no. I went to a few meetings, and that was the whole gist of it."

Davis : "Were there cross burnings?"

Moore : "I never went to a cross burning."

Davis : "Did you own a hood?"

Moore : "I don't recall owning a hood. I went to some meetings and that was it."

The man "doesn't recall" owning a hood? I recall a sailor cap that my mother made me wear when I was four, but this guy can't remember if he ever wore a Klansman's hood? Unpossible! Again!

Watching the well-fed grifters of education "reform" run their cons on the national stage — hello, there, Michelle Rhee! — is entertaining, but the real grunt work of the thing is being done at the local level in places like, well, Idaho, where there are three education "reform" measures on the ballot. The advocates thereof have resorted to the time-tested tactic of barbering quotes.

Here is the quote in its entirety: "Despite what some among us would like to believe, it is not because of our creative ideas. It is not because of the merit of our positions. It is not because we care about children. And it is not because we have a vision of a great public school for every child. NEA and its affiliates are effective advocates because we have power."

The Quote In Its Entirety has been something of a problem for conservative politicians this year because The Quote In Its Entirety generally has a liberal bias.

And we finish this week's tour back home again in Alabama, where they're still all tangled up in the Let The Crops Rot In The Fields Act, an immigration reform measure that a court this week decided was so much worse even than Arizona's efforts in that area that the court could not let it stand.

The blocked parts of the Alabama law include language that made it a crime for undocumented immigrants to work or solicit work; imposed criminal penalties to hide "an alien" or rent property to anyone in the United States illegally; and required state officials to check the immigration status of children in public schools.

I'm trying to think of another country that made it illegal to "hide" suspect populations in, say, the family attic or somewhere. Wait, it'll come to me. You have to go some to get so far to the right of Joe Arpaio that a court notices, and that you don't wind up falling off the edge of the earth.